The Traveller

She should have sat elsewhere.I did not like her,that girl who squeezed herself inbetween me and the bench's wooden arm,with her faux-suede skirt gripping my thigh.She smelled like the contents of my grandmother's purse -crushed sucking candies and tissues and discount hand lotion -and I thought she must be very lonely or Europeanto press herself so selflessly against a stranger.Canadians do not touch each other.She picked at something gummy stuck to her sweaterwhile I jiggled my leg in time to the clicks of the clerk's tapping pen.